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The Raspberry Pi 3 is now available to order

29 February 2016

RS Components and Allied Electronics announced that the new Raspberry Pi 3 Model B credit-card-sized single-board computer is now available to order.

Targeting use in industry, homes and schools and colleges worldwide, the latest generation of Raspberry Pi incorporates a powerful 64-bit ARM Cortex-A53 quad-core processor to deliver significantly enhanced performance, as well as offering integrated Bluetooth and wireless LAN connectivity as standard for Internet of Things (IoT) development projects.

Building upon the success of its predecessors - the Raspberry Pi 1 Model B+ and Raspberry Pi 2 Model B - the Raspberry Pi 3 has significantly upgraded processing capabilities to deliver 50% more performance than Raspberry Pi 2 and approximately ten times more than the original Raspberry Pi 1, allowing it to run even higher-end applications.

The board is based on the Broadcom BCM2837 SoC, which includes an ARM Cortex-A53 quad-core processor running at 1.2GHz, alongside a BCM43438 combo connectivity device, which provides 802.11b/g/n wireless LAN, Bluetooth Classic and Bluetooth Low Energy. BCM2837 integrates a dual-core VideoCore IV multimedia coprocessor, which provides the following:

The Raspberry Pi 3 boots from a micro SD card and uses the NOOBS (New Out Of the Box Software) installation manager. The standard Raspbian operating system install comes bundled with a range of productivity applications, and programming tools including Node-RED; this visual tool provides support for wiring together hardware devices, APIs and online services, making the board ideal for the rapid development and prototyping of IoT projects.

Retaining the same footprint as previous Raspberry Pi incarnations - with its credit-card-sized dimensions of 85 x 56 x 17mm - the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B retains many of the same features and capabilities of the previous generation. These include: the extensive 40-pin GPIO (General Purpose Input Output) connector; four USB connector port; full-HD HDMI; 10/100 Ethernet; 3.5mm audio jack and composite video; camera (CSI-2) and display (DSI) interfaces; and micro-SD card slot. Power input to the board is via its micro-USB socket requiring an external, plug-in power supply unit (PSU).

"We are unveiling the third-generation Raspberry Pi four years to the day after the launch of the original Raspberry Pi board on February 29, 2012,” said Eben Upton, founder of Raspberry Pi. “It also marks the four-year anniversary of our successful relationship with RS and Allied, which have played a significant role in its success as leading and trusted sources of products, technologies and information for professional engineers, hobbyists and those looking to make their first steps into the work of programming.”

“Raspberry Pi has taken another important step in its evolution,” said Lindsley Ruth, Chief Executive Officer at Electrocomponents. “Based on the robust and proven combination of hardware and software of the Raspberry Pi platform, this latest generation board delivers more processing power together with embedded wireless connectivity, plus software to make it easy for businesses or individuals to develop applications for the Internet of Things.”

The new Raspberry Pi 3 offered by RS and Allied is manufactured exclusively in the UK under licence by the distributor. A Raspberry Pi 3 compute module I/O board will also be available shortly from RS and Allied, enabling OEMs to develop their own Raspberry Pi 3 based solutions for many industrial applications.